


wished upon parallel lines

by intergalacticafro



Series: Parallel Lines [1]
Category: Glee
Genre: Codependency, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, M/M, One Shot, Other, Unconventional Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-07
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-11 11:05:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intergalacticafro/pseuds/intergalacticafro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But then Kurt's mom is sick with something he thinks is cancer, and he’s never wanted to be wrong more in his entire life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wished upon parallel lines

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from fun.'s "All Alright"

People call Kurt a smart kid because he gets good grades and when he answers questions in class he is almost never wrong. Kurt is proud of this because it makes his parents proud and he gets to go to the gifted class once a week to do puzzles.

But then Kurt's mom is sick with something he thinks is cancer, and he’s never wanted to be wrong more in his entire life.

He turns out to be right.

At first Santana isn't okay about it. She whines about Kurt being missing and tries to boss Kurt around same as always and yells at him when he just cries instead of fighting her back like he used to. Kurt sort of hates her for not understanding.

But it is Santana who holds his hand at the funeral, after she has escaped her family and crawled under several pews to sit by him, and Kurt is happy for once that her hands are always sticky from candy. Because when they finally peel their fingers apart when Santana has to go home, he can still feel the residue on his fingers, and its the kind of residue that doesn't hurt.

His mom's residue is all over the house, and touching those familiar things makes him want to scream and vomit like he did when he realized she was gone. He avoids her dresser for an entire year, but when they move to the smaller house to be closer to the shop, he makes sure his dad doesn't leave it behind. It takes another year and a half before he can bear to climb the steps to the attic, and when he opens the drawers and sets the dusty air swirling with her perfume, the tears are dripping down his face before he can even blink.

It’s not easy, but he manages to visit the attic at least once a month. After a while he doesn’t cry anymore, just settles on the dusty floor with his face to the ceiling and talks. He tells her everything, how school is going, how he misses her stories, his dreams about Broadway, even his worries about starting at a new school.

When a vicious winter storm dumps three feet of powdery snow on Lima, Santana slogs over in her snow boots and bullies her way up into the attic with him. Kurt is hesitant to show her the dresser, but when she pulls open the bottom drawer and takes a deep breath _before_ calling him a sensitive baby, he knows its okay. They spend the whole afternoon up there, drawing faces in the dust and practicing pirouettes in their socked feet.

It is in that attic that they kiss for the first time, an awkward meeting of lips that nearly ends in disaster as Kurt’s braces skid off of Santana’s overly glossed lips. But even when they create some sort of rhythm, Kurt doesn’t feel that swoop in his stomach he gets from just _looking_ at Finn Hudson, and when Santana pulls back and starts punching him in the arm, soft at first and then harder and harder as tears build up in her eyes, he knows she doesn’t feel it either and it scares her.

It scares him too, because he loves her but this has settled it, they’re both _wrong_ in a way that Lima, Ohio is not ready to deal with.

He’s suddenly overwhelmed with the need for his mom to be there, to be a living, breathing person who can hold them both tight and tell them that they’re okay, that they’re going to be fine. But all he has is a dresser and the lingering scent of perfume, and as Kurt finally catches Santana’s striking hands and curls his whole body around her as she sobs, he realizes that they have to do this one on their own.

 And even in the attic where he feels the safest, the thought seems so _impossible_ , and he clutches back at Santana and cries too. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i have been struggling with the idea of kurtana bestfriends/also potential beards for a really long time so  
> this was supposed to be the opening to a long-fic i had planned, but then it never got written, i'm hoping that posting it will motivate me to continue


End file.
